Business Communication

Successful organizations know that effective business communication boosts employee morale, performance, and the bottom line. The ability to listen well is the strongest influence on the quality and outcome of all communications. Only by listening effectively can people respond appropriately.

Discover the Impact of Different Listening Approaches

The Personal Listening Profile® helps people understand when their most natural listening approach may not be appropriate and how to adopt another approach for more successful communication.

It helps individuals identify which of the following five listening approaches they use to process, organize, store, and retrieve information:

Emphatic: Listens without judging, is supportive of the speaker, and learns from experiences of others.

Comprehensive: Listens to organize and make sense of information by understanding relationships among ideas.

Discerning: Listens to get complete information, understand the main message, and determine important details.

Evaluative: Listens in order to make a decision based on information provided and may accept or reject messages based on personal beliefs.

Learn to Listen and Respond with Purpose

Listening is more than hearing. Listening is the ability to receive, attend to, interpret, and respond to verbal messages and body language in ways that are appropriate to the purpose. If the message is entertaining, our purpose is to enjoy, so we listen and respond in a relaxed manner. If the message is intended to persuade us, our purpose is judgment, so we listen and respond critically.

It is estimated that people screen out and misunderstand the intended meaning or purpose of a message in over 70 percent of communications, making listening the biggest contributing factor to communication.